Low vision individuals often require magnification of computer screen interfaces to discern text and images. Magnification systems may be built into the operating system itself or may comprise feature-rich, third-party products such as those sold under the MAGIC brand manufactured by Freedom Scientific, Inc., based in St. Petersburg, Fla.
A deficiency in the current state of the art is the over-magnification of the pointing indicia. Low vision users are often limited in the magnification they can impose because the pointing indicia are magnified in step with the entire GUI. Thus, at high magnification levels (i.e., exceeding 16-fold) pointing indicia become so large they obscure much of the GUI itself.
Another deficiency exists in the current state of the art wherein low vision users, depending on the application and their own preferences, may desire a larger or smaller cursor or caret to enhance productivity. For example, a low vision user might desire a mouse pointer for a spreadsheet application to be magnified to 2-fold while the same mouse pointer in a word processing application is easier to use at 4-fold magnification.